Artifact #4: Literacy Assessment Paper

Overview

I have chosen to include this artifact in my project portfolio because it showcases my

skills as an educator in regards to assessing literacy skills in students. For this artifact I have

included the completed literacy assessments that I personally conducted on a student. This

artifact shows my readiness to effectively assess a student’s literacy skills and to work with a

student to increase their reading levels and abilities. This artifact also gives a written explanation

of my experiences while conducting these assessments and how I came about the findings on this

particular student. As an educator, it is a constant process of evaluating and then reassessing later

on in the year to see if progress has been made through the instruction practices being used. I feel

that the evidence I have provided in this artifact and the effectiveness of the assessments that

were conducted within this paper, this is evidence of my preparedness for a career as an

educator. I will now discuss which standards this artifact aligns with in accordance with both

NYS and Ontario curriculum expectations.

Connections to Standards

INTASC Standards

Standard #1: Learner Development

The teacher understands how learners grow and develop, recognizing that patterns of

learning and development vary individually within and across the cognitive, linguistic, social,

emotional, and physical areas, and designs and implements developmentally appropriate and

challenging learning experiences.

The teacher understands and uses multiple methods of assessment to engage learners in

their own growth, to monitor learner progress, and to guide the teacher’s and learner’s decision

making.

CAEP Standards

Standard 4: Program Impact

4.1 The provider documents, using multiple measures, that program completers

contribute to an expected level of student-learning growth. Multiple measures shall include all

available growth measures (including value-added measures, student-growth percentiles, and

student learning and development objectives) required by the state for its teachers and available

to educator preparation providers, other state-supported P-12 impact measures, and any other

measures employed by the provider.

NYS Code of Ethics for Educators

Principle 1: Educators nurture the intellectual, physical, emotional, social, and civic

potential of each student.

Educators promote growth in all students through the integration of intellectual, physical,

emotional, social and civic learning. They respect the inherent dignity and worth of each

individual. Educators help students to value their own identity, learn more about their cultural

heritage, and practice social and civic responsibilities. They help students to reflect on their own

learning and connect it to their life experience. They engage students in activities that encourage

diverse approaches and solutions to issues, while providing a range of ways for students to

demonstrate their abilities and learning.

Standard #3: Assessment and Evaluation

Candidates understand, select, and use valid, reliable, fair, and appropriate assessment tools to

screen, diagnose, and measure student literacy achievement; inform instruction and evaluate

interventions; participate in professional learning experiences; explain asses

Ontario Teacher Ethical Standards

The Ontario Teacher Ethical Standards that align with this artifact are care and respect.

As a teacher it is important to both care for your students and their needs, but also to have respect

in the classroom. This is shown within the artifact I have provided as evidence.
 Assessment and Instruction Plan

Stephanie Sumsion

Medaille College

I. Basic Data

a. Student Name: Andrew

b. Student Grade/ Stage of Development: Grade 5 & Stage 3: Reading for learning

the new (Chall, 1983).

c. Type of Assessment Analyzed:

a. Fluency Assessment (Repeated Reading) (S. Jay Samuels)

b. Benchmark Passage Running Record (Robert Camp)

c. Fiction Retelling/Interpreting Assessment (Brian Cambourne)

d. Phonics: Reading Nonsense Words Assessment (Adams)

e. Phonological Awareness Manipulating Sounds Assessment (Adams)

II. Summary of assessment documents:

After completing the above reading assessments on Andrew, I was able to assess a variety of

areas that will help to have a better understanding of his abilities. Through the assessments that

were completed on Andrew, the following were assessed; phonics, fluency, comprehension,

phonological awareness and oral reading accuracy.

a. Repeated Reading (Appendix A)

a series of 4 repeated readings of a passage titled “Skateboarding”. ‘The Method of Repeated

Readings’, by S. Jay Samuels, discussed this method and the effectiveness on a students speed

and accuracy when reading. I have used this theorist’s research as the reasoning behind why I

chose this particular assessment and why I feel that it effectively assesses a student’s fluency and

comprehension (Samuels. 1979).

The passage I chose to assess Andrew on was 125 words long and titled “Skateboarding.”

I chose this passage in particular because the student that I was assessing enjoys skateboarding as

a hobby and I thought that not only would the passage be interesting to him, but he may learn

something new about the sport that he loves. I asked Andrew to read through the passage a total

of four times over a period of a couple months. I wanted to assess if Andrew’s fluency rate

would increase over time. The first time Andrew read the passage his fluency rate was 96%. This

is a great percentage and Andrew has shown that he is able to read this passage on his own quite

fluently. The passage however was a level P and Andrew is able to read at a much higher level

with few errors. I chose this levelled passage because I wanted to assess Andrew’s fluency and

help him to better his overall fluency through repeated reading of a passage. Choosing a lower

levelled passage was helpful in Andrew being able to read it well the first time and increase to a

100% fluency rate after 4 times of reading the passage. Andrew had never seen this passage

before the first time reading it and he had 5 errors throughout the passage where he misread the

word or changed the word completely. By the 4th time that Andrew read the passage he was able

to read it very well and had no errors. I will attempt this process with a harder passage and see

how Andrew does with more difficult words.

passage with fluency and enthusiasm. Andrew was reading the passage and was able to correctly

read the words, however there was no change in the tone of his voice as he was reading the

passage. I chose a short passage titled ‘Skateboarding,’ because I felt that this was something

Andrew would show an interest in. He was interested in this passage and read the words with no

hesitation; however, I feel he was really struggling with the punctuation and how to read

particular sentences. For example, when he was reading the list of what early skateboards use, he

did not pause between the different items, and therefore as someone listening to the story being

read, I would have difficulty understanding that he was listing items, as the words all seemed to

run together into one another. Overall, Andrew did very well with this assessment and it was

seen through his progress, that his fluency level increased after reading the passage multiple

times.

b. Running Record (Appendix B)

The Benchmark Passage Running Record is used to assess a student’s error rate and

accuracy rate when it comes to reading. The running record was developed by Robert Camp, and

is the process by which teachers “use standard recording and scoring procedures to accurately

and objectively record what a young reader said and did while orally reading continuous text”

(Clay, 2000). The use of this assessment is helpful in understanding whether or not a student is

able to read at a certain level and what their reading level is based on how many words they can

read correctly within a passage. This is oftentimes based on age and grade level however not all

students fall in this norm, and therefore a student’s reading abilities and level can be assessed

using a running record and finding out the accuracy rate of the student at that particular reading

level.
 The passage that I used for this assessment was titled, “The Solar Car Race”. I chose this

passage in particular because the student that I was assessing enjoys learning about cars and

therefore I thought that not only would the passage be interesting to him but he may show more

enthusiasm when reading the passage. This passage was a level X in the Benchmark levelled

reading program. This is a level that Andrew should not have extreme difficulty with and should

not frustrate him, as he is at this reading level in other books we have read. Andrew was at a 97%

accuracy rate after reading this passage and did a great job of reading the words correctly.

Andrew struggled with some of the words in the passage and changed the word completely, such

as instead of saying the word ‘wouldn’t’, Andrew said “would not.” This could be attributed to

the fact that he was rushing through the passage as he felt it was easy and was not correctly

looking at all of the words in front of him. Some of the words Andrew read, he was not looking

at the word he was reading and therefore guessed what the word was just by looking at the first

and last letters. The fact that Andrew was rushing was part of the reason, he was not able to read

all the words correctly, however Andrew did a great job at sounding out words he was not

familiar with and required little to no promoting when it came to a word he needed to sound out.

Andrew also did a good job of correcting errors near the end of the passage when he was reading

much slower and was looking at all the letters in the words.

c. Fiction Retelling/Interpreting Assessment (Appendix C)

The Fiction Retelling Assessment that I completed on my student, Andrew, was based on

the Benchmark passage that he read during the second assessment. This assessment was designed

to assess whether a student understands a story or passage that they have read. Based on seven

conditions of learning that were proposed by Brian Cambourne, it is important that a student is

immersed in the reading and that they are fully able to comprehend what they are reading in
order to actually enjoy it and learn from it (Cambourne, 1988). It is also a tool to assess if a

student is able to retell a story or interpret what they have just read. I feel that this is difficult for

some students, as they are focusing on the words and trying to read the passage instead of

comprehending what they are reading.

For this assessment the Benchmark passage that Andrew read was a level X and was

titled “The Solar Car Race”. I chose this passage to assess Andrew, because he is very interested

in cars as I have seen through his interests in the classroom and his discussions with his peers. I

thought that by using a passage that was of an interest to Andrew could be a way of helping to

comprehend the information as it was something he was engaged in and found exciting to read. I

found this to be effective as Andrew has had difficulty with his comprehension, and he did very

well on this assessment. Andrew obtained a score of 12 points on this assessment, which would

put him in the range of ‘Skilled Level.’ There was a medium amount of prompting that was

given to Andrew during this assessment as he struggled more with being able to understand what

parts of the story were being asked for. For example, Andrew struggled with where the story

took place, because there was no particular name of a place that what stated in the passage. I was

looking to see if Andrew could read between the lines a little, and be able to figure out where the

story was taking place. The story was taking place in a race on a racetrack and there was no

particular town or country that was named so this was difficult for Andrew. Andrew also

struggled when it came to remembering the names of the characters in the passage and had to go

back and look at the names. He was able to identify some of the characters; however, he was not

able to identify which character was important or what made them important. Andrew did well at

identifying the problem in the story as well as how it was solved. I feel this was attributed to the
fact that he was interested in the story and the problem had to do with cars, therefore this was

something he could relate to.

d. Phonics: Reading Nonsense Words Assessment (Appendix D)

Through the Reading Nonsense Words Assessment, Andrew was assessed on his phonics

and ability to sound out words that he is not familiar with based on sounding out the letters and

read the words. Marilyn Jager Adams suggested that you need to focus on the sounds of the

words in order to interpret the meaning. Oftentimes teachers will try and describe how a

phoneme sounds and this is not accurate as they are not sounding on their own (Adams, 2011).

The sounds however can and do change the meaning of a word if they are interchanged.

Andrew was given a 2-minute time limit to say all of the 24 words on the page. He was

able to say all of the words in just under 2 minutes with 3 errors of mispronounced words.

Andrew was able to read majority of the words on the page; however, I feel that the time limit he

was given was difficult for him and caused him to rush through the words. When he got to the

20th word in the list, Andrew was focused on how much time was left and not on looking closely

at the letters and sounds the words made. Therefore because of this time restraint I feel this is

why Andrew misread 3 of the 24 words. If there was no time limit, or if I had chosen not to

disclose how long he would have to say the words, it may have been more accurate and I feel

Andrew would have been able to say all 24 words correctly in the 2 minutes.

Andrew did well at looking at the difficult parts of the words and sounding them out

before just guessing what the words would be, as they were unfamiliar and not real words that he

would have seen anywhere else. This made it difficult for him however, he overcame the fact

that the words were unfamiliar and looked at the letter sounds that he was familiar with, in order

to figure out the nonsense words he was given to read. This was a very effective assessment in
finding out if Andrew is able to sounds out words and use familiar sounds to distinguish words

that were not familiar. The student also really enjoyed this assessment, as it was difficult for him

to get all the words correct and was challenging to figure out the words that he had never seen

before.

e. Manipulating Sounds Assessment (Appendix E)

The Manipulating Sounds Assessment was used to assess Andrew’s phonological

awareness. This was also something that was discussed by Marilyn Adams in order to improve a

student’s ability and level of reading (Adams, 2011). Through getting Andrew to say the prefix

or beginning sound of a word and then saying the word using a different prefix, creating a whole

new word, allowed myself to see if Andrew was able to use his phonological awareness of

beginning sounds in order to manipulate a word. This assessment was interesting to see if a

student who is able to read and write at a stage 3 ability, would have difficulty. Through the

process it was first difficult for Andrew to understand what was being asked of him to do. Giving

him an example helped him to understand what he was being assessed on and what he was

supposed to do to complete the assessment. Andrew found this to be a fun activity and he

enjoyed the challenge of trying to manipulate the prefix when he couldn’t see the words in front

of him.

After completing this assessment, I scored that Andrew’s was able to orally pronounce 9

out of the 11 words correctly. He had difficulty with the first word as he was trying to understand

what he was being asked to do. Andrew also had difficulty with the word ‘fall’ and changing the

prefix so that it was /sm/ instead of /f/. He eventually did figure out the word but it took a lot of

prompting for him to get to. Andrew had trouble being able to manipulate the sounds when the

phoneme was more difficult. He was able to change sounds that use one letter such as; /b/, but
/sn/ and /bl/ were more challenging. Lastly. I felt that because this assessment was working with

the sounds of spoken instead of written words, this was a challenge for Andrew and could pose a

challenge for students who are more visual and struggle being able to spell words without

writing them down.

III. Instruction Plan:

After completing the above 5 assessments on my student Andrew, I was able to see what his

instructional needs are based on the results I received. The focus for Andrew would be on his

phonological awareness, comprehension and fluency. The first assessment that I completed was a

fluency assessment where I asked Andrew to read a passage to me four times over a period of a

couple months. Through this assessment I was able to see that Andrew would benefit from more

instruction on how to read punctuation. I found that Andrew was not reading with any expression

and the tone of his voice did not change even after reading the passage multiple times. I think

that focusing on how to use punctuation and how to read using punctuation, will be where I need

to work with Andrew the most. I will model for him through guided practice, how to read with

expression and how to read each type of punctuation, such as an exclamation mark, commas, or

quotation marks, when someone is talking. I will also continue to work with Andrew in obtaining

this skill of being able to not only read fluently, but also to be able to use more than one tone

while reading based on the punctuation of the sentence.

The second assessment that I completed with Andrew was, a running record of a Benchmark

passage titled “The Solar Car Race,” where Andrew did very well. However, there are some

aspects that need to be addressed in regards to more instruction focused on this need. Andrew

read the passage very quickly and I had to encourage him to slow down while reading in order to

not make simply mistakes on words that I know he is familiar with. During this assessment,
Andrew oftentimes did not look at the word as a whole and therefore guessed what the word was

because he was skimming the passage too quicly. I will model for Andrew through guided

practice, how to read slowly in order to not only read all the words correctly, but to better

understand the overall message and parts of the story or passage. This will help him when he is

reading on his own and in other subject areas.

The third assessment that I completed with Andrew was a Retelling/Interpreting Assessment

which was intended to assess his comprehension abilities. I was able to determine that although

Andrew is able to comprehend most of what he is reading, more instruction needs should be

focused on him knowing the different elements of a story and in particular where a story takes

place. If there is a town, city or a particular place named in the story or passage, Andrew is able

to determine the place based on the name. However, when it comes to more generic places such

as a park or a racetrack, he has more difficulty with finding this information in the text. I will go

over this concept with Andrew and help him to understand that the setting of a story can be a

variety of things. I will use guided practice and other text examples such as children at school

where the name of the school is not said. I will explain to him that the children are at a school

and therefore that is the setting, where the story takes place. I will give Andrew more text

samples and ask him this question to see if he can determine on his own, where the story takes

place.

The fourth assessment that I completed with Andrew was the Phonics: Reading Nonsense

Words Assessment. Through this assessment I was able to see that Andrew is very strong in his

ability to use his knowledge of phonics when it comes to reading words that are made up or that

he is not familiar with. Using his previously learned phonics skills, Andrew was able to read 21

out of 24 nonsense words. The one aspect that Andrew struggled with and I will focus my future
instruction on this need, was that he was focused on the amount of time it was taking him to read

the words, instead of focusing on the words. I will also encourage Andrew through guided

practice, to point to the words with his finger as he is sounding them out. Andrew struggled with

this during the assessment and I will practice with him using more nonsense words and words he

is unfamiliar with. I will also teach him to use this strategy of sounding out the word and using

his finger to sound out each part of the word in order to determine how to say the word as a

whole.

The final assessment that I completed with Andrew was the Phonological Awareness:

Manipulating Sounds Assessment. Overall, Andrew did very well on this assessment considering

this is something he was not familiar with. Future instructional needs for this are based on the

fact that Andrew struggled when it came to phonemes that were made up of two letters, such

as /sm/. I will use guided practice to work on these sounds with him and practice manipulating

these sounds with other words. I will model for Andrew how to say a word without the original

prefix and then adding the new prefix, as a way of helping him understand how to manipulate the

sounds.

I will strongly encourage Andrew to read on his own on a daily basis, in order to better all of

his reading skills. I feel that this process of independent practice will not only help Andrew with

the skills I have assessed him on, but also on his overall reading abilities and his level of

comprehension of more difficult books.

An example of a handout I will give to Andrew in order to help him remember the concept of

setting and what this can include is shown below. I will also go over some more practice words

relating to sound/phoneme substitution which I have also included below.

IV. Reflection:

After completing this assignment, I have learned a lot about the process of conducting an

assessment and analyzing it. I have learned a lot about the use of assessments, the different

assessments that are available and used, as well as the benefits of using different assessments.

The theory of being able to assess a student on their reading ability, fluency, comprehension, or

any other skill, is difficult to learn until actually doing it with a student. This process on paper

seems much simpler than it is in actuality. When assessing students, I have learned that it is

difficult to anticipate what they are going to do or how they are going to respond, no matter how

well you know the student. You always need to expect that the student isn’t going to do

everything the way you may have imagined in your head, and to just take each assessment as it
comes. I think that by conducting these assessments I was able to a few challenges students may

face.

I have learned a lot not only about how to actually assess a student through the 5 assessments

that I completed, but also how to choose particular texts that are relatable to the student. Also to

make sure the books and passages are at a level that the student feels comfortable with, and does

not make them frustrated. I found the time it took to complete the assessments much more than I

had originally anticipated, and it was also much more difficult to keep the student’s attention for

as long as I would have liked to. I have learned that in order to do the assessments properly you

need to work with each student and take time that is needed for them, as each student is different,

and to try and get as much information in the short amount of time you may have working with a

student. I think this was a great learning experience and will be very useful when I need to go out

and complete these assessments in my future career.

https://childrenofthecode.org/interviews/adams.htm

Cambourne, B. 1988. About the Conditions of Learning. Retrieved from;

http://www.cambournesconditionsoflearning.com.au/

Clay, M. M. 2000. Running Records: For Classroom Teachers. Retrieved from;

https://www.scusd.edu/sites/main/files/file-

attachments/decs_running_records_australia.pdf

Samuels, J, S. 1979. The Method of Repeated Readings. The Reading Teacher, Vol. 32, No. 4

(Jan., 1979), pp. 403-408. Retrieved from;

https://atuckre5710.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/method-of-repeated-reading.pdf

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